He is celebrated in textbooks as the “founder of the independent Bengal Sultanate” and the man who first called this land “Bangalah” and its people “Bangali.” The truth, stripped of romantic varnish, is far more brutal: Shams al-Din Ilyas Shah (r. 1342–1358) was medieval Bengal’s most ruthless conqueror—a serial invader, temple razer, and plunderer-in-chief who…